“Everything was going normally until a student got up and stuck a big knife in the Spanish teacher’s chest, he was very calm. “This Wednesday, at the beginning of the afternoon, Inès returned with her mother in front of her establishment after having witnessed the fatal attack on her teacher. It was there, in the Saint-Thomas d’Aquin Catholic private high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Basque Country), that at 9.45 a.m., a Spanish teacher was stabbed by a second-year student, in the middle of course. “When I looked up, he was already standing with the knife. It all happened in a few seconds, ”summarizes the young second student again at 20 Minutes.
The 52-year-old teacher died shortly after her attack, a shock for the students of this establishment, which is reputed to be very calm, and for all of the approximately 15,000 inhabitants of this city on the Basque coast. This Wednesday afternoon, many mothers refuse with a nod the (numerous) requests from the media posted in front of the Catholic high school. Behind them, the students no longer pass through the gate joking with their friends but shaking hands with their parents, looking pale.
It was “unthinkable in a high school like that”
Inès, she says she was paralyzed and that it was one of her classmates who had the reflex to open a door at the back of the class, which communicated with another classroom. Panicked, the students fled through this door. “I went through the lower portal. A friend’s dad brought me home, ”says the Franco-Spanish student. Of the attacker, aged 16, the young girl does not know much: “I do not know him more than that, he was just in Spanish with me. I can’t quite fathom what happened. I never thought I would experience this. »
Hugo, a 15-year-old student, was not present during the fatal attack. However, he says he is “still in shock”, stating that it was “unthinkable in a high school like that”. As for this 16-year-old student, he was not in this Spanish class and he admits, through gritted teeth, to worry about his girlfriend. The latter is one of the students of the two classes who were confined to the floor where the tragedy took place. The young woman and some 90 other students (those of the two confined classes and those of the Spanish class) began to be taken care of by the psychological unit set up this Wednesday morning.
But the excitement goes well beyond the enclosure of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin. Thus, Emilie is also “shocked”. This 42-year-old mother came to the Saint-Jean-de-Luz high school with her son, educated in Biarritz, to place a white rose: “We are not used to it here, we are protected from everything. In Biarritz, people only talk about that, when I think children witnessed that. »
“A tragedy of exceptional gravity”
Education Minister Pap Ndiaye and Stanislas Guerini, Minister of Public Service, made the trip. They evoke a “drama of exceptional gravity which moved the whole of France”. The two politicians expressed their emotion and showed their solidarity with the educational community. A necessarily upset educational community, of which some teachers who meet by chance in the corridors of the private high school have wet eyes. The professional qualities of the victim were praised by the Minister of Education, who spoke of an “exceptional dedication to the service of students”. The rector of the Bordeaux academy Agnès Bisagni-Faure spoke of a solid collective spirit between the teachers, “a real strength for the establishment”.
“We first let the immediacy of the drama settle. And on the spiritual level, we will then organize prayer times to allow everyone to come together. I said this to the teachers just now who are very shocked at the loss of their colleague”, slips to 20 minutes Marc Aillet, Bishop of Bayonne.
An investigation has been opened for assassination, announced in a lapidary way the prosecutor of Bayonne, Jérôme Bourrier, who will give a press conference tomorrow, Thursday. A, the morning will be trivialized for the care of the students. A minute of silence will be held in all schools that same day at 3 p.m., in tribute to the victim. As for the suspect, unknown to the police and aged 16, he was taken into custody.